We stand at the window, marveling at the spider’s handiwork, her stitching and knitting. No matter what calamity happens to her domain, she’s right back at it again.
“The web is gone,” I say, crooning my neck to see around the bush that partially obstructs our kitchen window.
“No!” says my spouse Janyce, as she passes me on her way to the coffee pot.
Just yesterday, we saw the spider again, spinning another web. It hung delicately in the open space between the bushes, backlit against the open sky. Janyce was excited to see the spider return, after the workmen installing gutters inadvertently tore the last web down.
But this morning it is gone again.
I stand at the window holding my coffee cup, looking out into the empty space, out at our trees just now starting to turn colors on the edges. It’s the beginning of October and recently I felt a strong need to buy a pile of pumpkins and mums. I distributed them all around the house— the front steps, the back patio, placing them in muddy leaf-strewn pools leftover from the previous week of rain.
I make my way back to the bed and crawl in again with my computer, resting it up on my bent knees.
“I’m sorry, but I stink,” says Janyce, seconds later, crawling over my computer cord stretched across her side all while balancing her cup and a plate of toast.
“I just coughed and a tiny piece of toast went flying,” I say, laughing and trying to catch my breath, balancing toast crumbs on my own plate that I carefully slide over to my side.
“That’s gross,” she says, pointing to the crumb on the white comforter. Our dog is up on the bed with us, sighing.
Andrea Gibson is the poet laureate of Colorado and I’ve googled them, pictures fill my computer screen and I point to one in particular to Janyce, one that clearly shows where their hair is cut with a shaved bottom and a clearly demarcated line between the short and the long.
“You could do that,” I say.
“No, I don’t like it that severe,” says Janyce. “I mean, it looks good on her”
I don’t correct Janyce’s pronoun use.
I heard an interview with Andrea and their poet partner Megan recently and they didn’t talk about poetry throughout most of it, just about each other and what it’s like to be living day-to-day, in the moment, in the reality of an incurable cancer diagnosis.
I’ve never been a huge fan of spoken slam poetry. I prefer the written words, the visual images on paper more than the audible, and often over-performed tempos and rhythms. But something about Andrea discussing the details of their days made me decide to look them up, listen to some of the videos of them performing.
It wasn’t so long ago that I had cancer myself—a small tumor, very curable, and actually the best kind of breast cancer you can get because the likelihood of it never coming back is almost certain. Almost. But nothing is ever really certain. Is it?
“That every falling leaf is a tiny kite
with a string too small to see, held
by the part of me in charge
of making beauty
out of grief” - Andrea Gibson
I’m back again in the kitchen, and I call out to Janyce who moments later appears in the doorway. “Omg, the web IS back.” I say. “Maybe I missed it this morning?”
“Look, she has three meals in there now,” she says, her nose right up to the glass.
We have a great view. Three inchworms are wrapped like mini burritos dangling in the sticky net. We stand at the window, marveling at the spider’s handiwork, the result of all her stitching and knitting. No matter what calamity happens to her domain, she’s right back at it again.
The spider web reminds me of a really great four-episode series simply called Marriage that we watched a few weeks back. The show moved so slowly it wasn’t unlike the two of us standing in the kitchen window now watching the spider as she meticulously weaves the thinnest sticky strand to span the entirety of our window.
Nothing happens in the show. It’s my favorite kind of drama because the viewer actually has to use their brain a little to make inferences, to extract meaning, to see the average moments for what they often are— tiny mundane miracles.
Living in the daily nothing with another person, repeating over and over the banalities of the everyday is a challenge. I always hate it when someone says that marriage takes work, because I don’t believe it does. It can be the most complacent, boring, autopilot activity there is in life, this living side-by-side, cleaning the kitchen, washing the same breakfast pans over and over, walking the dog along the wooded path every day at the same time. Marriage is easy. Noticing your partner anew every day is hard. Making beauty out of grief is the whole point.
“Do you think the spider ever has a bad day, ever just says to herself, ‘I’m too tired to spin this web again today?’” says Janyce.
“ Maybe,” I say. But then I think she will build it all over again on another day. Like always.
I love your line about marriage being easy but seeing your partner anew each day is hard. That was a gorgeous line!
I love the photo of the web! It's the biggest, I think, that I've ever seen! And the story is wonderfully meaningful also!